The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot

by Angus Wilson

  ‘Good God,’ he said, ‘where on earth did you find it?’

  ‘It was among all those books in Else’s room.’

  ‘Oh Lord! It must be fabulously boring.’

  ‘Some of it’s boring, yes, though academically excellent, I’m sure. But there are passages that fascinated me. Especially one arising from Pamela about the sexual excitement attaching to lower-class people – servants and so on – in the eighteenth century. And the degree to which the subject has to be purified or sentimentalized in novels, at that time even. I should have thought that the nineteenth century would provide even better material.’

  ‘But of course. It’s one of Thackeray’s chief warnings, and Trollope and Samuel Butler follow him up. And Dickens is obsessed with it from Little Nell to Lizzie Hexham. It’s got two strands – the deflowering of virgins and the corrupting of oneself with harlots.’

  ‘I should love to work those patterns out.’

  ‘Well, why don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, David, I haven’t the training for that sort of thing, but if you were to work on it, I’d like to help.’

  He looked at her gravely. ‘If this is a subtle attempt to get me back to the University, it’s no good, Meg. Firstly, this kind of theme wouldn’t do in the modern literary academic world. It smells far too much of sociology and Freud. Secondly, I’ve been too long out of that world to get back, at my age. Thirdly, I don’t want to go back to it.’

  She laughed. ‘I can see you might think that was what I was up to, but I’m not, David. Quite honestly, I thought possibly of some articles and eventually, perhaps, a book very little more respectable than your Garden Flowers in their Homes series; but a good deal more interesting to me, and, I believe, to you. But it wouldn’t make any greater assertions than your ‘Africa’ will, if you publish it.’

  ‘Yes, it would. Assertions literary, sociological and possibly intellectual. Very assertive,’ he laughed.

  But she did not respond to his laughter. ‘Oh, well,’ she said, and sighed. The sigh sounded so remote from him that he said immediately, ‘If you’ll work on it with me, Meg, I’ll certainly consider it. I’ll write to the publishers today to say, “No Africa” and then we can start. After all, it will only mean re-reading a great number of books that I shall be glad to read again. If it works out, then I’ll see about writing some of it up. A good book couldn’t appear for a long while. The time for writing here is inevitably so limited.’

  ‘Inevitably? There’s no earthly reason, David, why you shouldn’t hand over the nursery to Tim whenever you want. Certainly for as long as you needed to write a book.’

  ‘Oh yes there is, Meg.’ He tried to make this sound as definite as he could.

  She asked, ‘David, why are you so entrenched in your attitude about the nursery? You’re not basically interested in gardening. You went into it because of Gordon.’

  He said, ‘That’s not true, Meg. And, even if it were, that would be the first of reasons for my continuing with it.’

  There was silence for a moment, then she said, ‘I’m sorry, David. I shouldn’t have said that. I hadn’t truly understood how you felt about it.’

  And now they were brought even closer. David suggested that they should start with the minor eighteenth-century novelists – ‘to get over the boring part first’.

  Fat little calf-bound volumes of Coventry and Johnstone, Mackenzie and Mrs Robinson began to arrive from the London Library. With all the exchange of comment and analysis that passed between him and Meg, these stilted, shallow novels proved enthralling. It was difficult even to fit in ‘music appreciation’ for which Climbers was clamouring – she had suddenly and improbably decided that she wanted to know about the development of Church music (shades of Gordon, David thought). It was often very late when they went to bed.

  Yet in the day-time, David worked as he had not done for a year or two. He felt somehow impelled to prove to himself that the nursery needed him. He supervised sterilizing of soil and of boxes, preparation of houses, seed preparation, temperature regulation for the forcing of annuals. He spent hours with Collihole discussing the renewal of grafting stock, methods of layering, and new pest controls. He even poked his nose into Tim’s hybridization experiments and once or twice nearly got it bitten off. He found peculiar delight in the vulgarity of a Homes and Gardens type of display house which Climbers thought would give an up-to-date look to the entrance of the nursery. And all these things he discussed again with Meg. He found pleasure in the affairs of the nursery; he knew that the enthusiasm of the pioneer years with Gordon had gone for ever, but this gave the work its proper measure of remoteness. When at last he got to bed in the early hours of the morning, he lay meditating on the mystery of man’s supreme value and of his utter insignificance which demanded in turn the mysterious power to love and to remain apart. He allowed himself to hope that elsewhere people, Robinson Crusoe-like, were building up little island cultures of work and pleasure deliberately kept simple, and of loneliness accepted; little islands that might, if chaos were by some improbable chance not yet come, give human activity a new, slow-burning start. Above all, he tried to fight back to the limit of its critical usefulness his natural rage of irony that, playing around these simple, defenceless ideas, might consume and destroy the truth that he surely believed to be within them.

  He drove over twice in those warm March days to ‘Oblongs’ where even the year’s exceptional sunshine could reveal no more than a neglected mockery of Miss Jekyll’s wild garden of daffodils, muscari, and anemones. Upon each visit he liked Frederica Grant-Pritchard the more. He discovered in her a turn of sentimentalism combined with self-mockery that peculiarly appealed to him as she argued for a complete restoration of the garden of 1905 with no ‘improvements’, no later species or varieties, only renewal – and then at the next moment agreed ruefully that this would be an affectation of puristic traditionalism, more charming perhaps, more idiosyncratic, but no less pretentious than the re-creation of the parterres and formal walks that once must have ornamented the house, reputed to have been designed by a pupil of Burleigh.

  ‘That piece of grandiose snobbery,’ he said, ‘at any rate was knocked on the head when its Edwardian owner gave it its early Tudor new look and found somewhere the rather bogus old farmhouse name of “Oblongs”.’

  Meg did not accompany him on these visits.

  Easter came rather early, and with it the sudden announcement by Meg that she would, after all, be doing odd secretarial jobs for Michael Grant-Pritchard during the recess. David was too annoyed, and, he had to admit to himself, too afraid of what this meant for the future, to make any comment. Meg offered some explanation unasked. ‘It’s only that I’m not having him say that I made a promise and didn’t keep it. Yes, and after all, two hours wasn’t very long; there’s a little more I want to find out about his whole mystique.’ She laughed nervously.

  ‘That’s all right,’ David said. ‘You’ll try to fit it in with what’s needed here, won’t you?’

  At this she seemed to lose her nervousness. She smiled mischievously. ‘Yes, David, I will try,’ she said.

  It had to be admitted that at no time during the fortnight that followed did she allow either the housekeeping or the nursery correspondence to be neglected. Only the evenings’ musical discussions and the novel reading suffered as she whizzed backwards and forwards from ‘Oblongs’ in the Rover at every sort of hour by Michael Grant-Pritchard’s request. She reported in those days a good deal of the things he had said and her deductions from them.

  ‘It’s a whole pocket of English life,’ she explained once or twice, ‘that I’ve simply left unexplored under my very nose. And a very important pocket.’

  David truly succeeded in not hearing most of what she said and in quickly forgetting the rest. Only once did she rouse his anger. ‘Mr Grant-Pritchard,’ she used this form of name habitually and ironically, ‘is very broadminded, David. He thinks you ought to have a boy friend.’

&n
bsp; David knew that he sounded like ‘retired colonel’ from the past pages of Punch, as he said, ‘I’d be very glad, Meg, if you would not discuss me with him. And if you must, don’t think it necessary to repeat his comments to me. I’ve no wish to hear them.’

  His evident annoyance surprised and disturbed her. ‘David,’ she cried, ‘I only thought it was rather funny. The impertinence of his broadmindedness, I mean.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ David answered, trying to recover his temper, ‘he’ll evidence it in the House when the subject comes up for general discussion.’

  ‘Oh, he wouldn’t say such a thing in public,’ she said. ‘He believes that these controversial issues that cut across party lines are liable to get an M.P. into more trouble than they’re worth. No, it’s just that he’s horrified by any sexual self-denial, or for that matter, sexual indulgence – they distract a man from his central aims.’

  David, his sudden anger cooled, allowed the rest of her comments to go unheard.

  It was Michael Grant-Pritchard himself who succeeded in seriously upsetting David during that fortnight. They met, by chance it seemed, in the hall of Andredaswood where Grant-Pritchard, passing by in the car, had come to bring Meg some correspondence.

  ‘Oh, I’m glad to see you, Parker,’ he said. ‘I was intending to ring you up. I’m a bit at sea about this garden scheme of yours.’

  ‘Of your wife’s.’

  ‘Yes, she’s really found herself an interest, hasn’t she? I suppose it’s all right, but I can’t help thinking that all this Edwardian garden-making’s a bit out of keeping with the house. It’s by a pupil of Burleigh’s, you know. The proportions are beautiful.’

  David spoke as sweetly as he was able. ‘The interior is very fine,’ he said. ‘I’m less happy about the early Tudor exterior.’

  ‘Yes, that’s a frightful bit of nonsense. I suppose it’s got a charm as such. I must see if I can get Betjeman down to say whether it’s amusing or not. But these great herbaceous borders! They always strike me as suburbia on a large scale. I think if you have a really good house, you should go all out for the formal garden these days.’

  ‘Oh yes.’ David said, ‘I think Miss Mitford would agree that it was more U.’

  Michael Grant-Pritchard gave what David imagined was his charming, boyish chuckle. ‘That’s exactly where I got the idea from,’ he said. He dismissed the subject with a smile. He waited until David had turned to mount the stairs, then he said, ‘Your sister’s a phenomenally good secretary.’

  David turned round to face him, but gave no more than a perfunctory smile.

  ‘She’s that rare thing,’ Grant-Pritchard went on, ‘an intelligent woman who can also do dogsbody work quickly and well. She’d have no difficulty with research and, of course, she’s got all the social gifts. She’s the perfect private secretary in fact. I must tell you that I’ve been advising her to leave this place altogether. She’s completely wasted here.’

  It was only as he heard this said that David knew what utter desolation Meg’s absence would mean for him, had indeed meant on the evenings during that fortnight when she had been at ‘Oblongs’. He managed with difficulty to say, ‘Wasted is a relative word, surely.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Michael Grant-Pritchard was more arrogantly drawling than usual, ‘I’m using it so. Her exceptional talents are wasted in relation to a backwater like this.’

  Meg was not home until after eleven that night. David had determined to say nothing to her, but so great was his anxiety, that the question burst from him as soon as she came in.

  She looked at him in distress. ‘Oh, David!’ she cried, ‘of course I’m not taking any notice of what he says. As a matter of fact, it was the most impertinent suggestion. Apparently I’m so good that even Mr Grant-Pritchard considers relinquishing his share in his present secretary. He’s pretty certain he could find some other M.P.s to share in the expense of my services. And since I’m such a pinko he might even be able to get a Labour chap to join with them just to please me. Ha, ha, ha! When he’s uncertain of my reaction, David, he treats me to little jokes suitable for a niece of twelve.’

  David, as he heard this out-of-hand rejection, first calmed into stillness and then trembled with happy excitement. He laughed aloud and Meg, pleased, echoed the laughter. Then she added, ‘But I wish you weren’t so upset by a thing like this, David. It isn’t right.’

  She continued with her journeys to ‘Oblongs’ but they gave David few qualms now. Indeed, he hardly noticed when she was at home one whole day until she said, ‘Mr Grant-Pritchard’s given me three days’ well-earned holiday. He used those words!’

  It was on the second of these days that Frederica Grant-Pritchard suddenly appeared at Andredaswood to see David. She looked, David thought, tired and older; her plump pink and white flesh seemed mottled, and her blue eyes protruded more than usual through her heavy eyelids now red rimmed.

  She said, rather breathlessly, ‘I’m afraid it isn’t going to be any good. I’m so sorry I’ve given you all that trouble. Michael’s got quite different ideas now – terraces and long avenues of beech hedge. I think there are to be fountains. It’ll all be enormously expensive. But much more in keeping with the house, of course.’

  David said only, ‘With the sham early Tudor?’

  ‘Oh, well, I think Michael’s having the façade restored.’

  ‘It will be expensive.’

  ‘Yes. But, of course, it’ll repay us if we have to entertain a lot. If Michael’s made a junior minister, you know.’ She looked so desperately at him that he made no further comment. ‘Of course, you’re to do it for us,’ she said, ‘Michael’s most insistent on that. You’ll find him full of ideas when you work with him.’

  He did not wish to distress her further, so he kept back his rejection. ‘Well, we’ll leave that until you’re ready to start, shall we?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it might be some time yet. Michael won’t be back again before the House sits, and then in the summer recess he’s leading a study party to the Ruhr. He feels we’ve so much to learn from them. Oh,’ she added with a little cry of remembrance, ‘will you tell your sister that he’s gone? I don’t think he had time to tell her himself. I expect she’ll be only too pleased. He’s been overworking her monstrously.’

  David told Meg with a certain relish. He had expected her to be surprised or, at least, angry, but she seemed only amused.

  ‘Oh dear, I can just see him thinking that not to give me notice would serve me right for refusing his moth-eaten offer.’

  ‘Such lack of self-control can hardly be helpful in his career,’ David said.

  ‘Oh, dear God! He wouldn’t allow himself such childish indulgence with anyone that mattered,’ she said, ‘Scenes from the private life of a great man. That’s what we’ve been privileged to see, David. And very interesting it’s been. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if he wasn’t trying to cheat me out of my wages as well. He probably thinks I’m too much of a lady to write and ask for them. But he’s wrong.’

  David told her of the changes of plan for the garden at ‘Oblongs’.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ she said, ‘that means a loss of money to you. But I do see you couldn’t work with him.’

  ‘I’m sorry mainly for her.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I ought to feel more for her. But, you see, after all, David, like Mother, she has an adoring son to fight for her. He’s only fourteen but I’ve seen the way he looks at her and at him.’

  David felt, that evening, as though he had been playing one of the race games they had possessed as children – there it had been – four spaces ahead the Wicked Tory Wizard, land on him and you must go back to the beginning; but he had thrown five and was clear. Nevertheless, for a day or two Meg seemed abstracted and depressed, so that in the end he said to her, ‘We agreed to be honest with each other, Meg. Do you regret not taking that man’s offer?’

  She smiled and said, ‘Good heavens, no! It’s unsettled me a little, but I’m happy to
see you happy. No, that’s like Mother. I’m truly happy, especially if we could get started with those articles.’

  To David it seemed only fair to help Meg to adapt herself after the ‘nervous attack of Grant-Pritchard’, as he now called it to himself. He waited until the next day when in the office they were checking accounts, then he said to Tim in her presence, ‘Do you think you could take over for a few months, Tim, if I wanted to have time off? I’m thinking of writing a book, not a gardening one.’

  Tim said immediately, ‘Good Lord, yes. Any time you like,’ so that even Meg laughed and cried, ‘Do be more tactful, Tim.’ But she was clearly delighted.

  The next day Tim said, ‘Eileen was as pleased as Punch that you were considering handing things over to me for a while.’ There was something in his tone that made David raise his eyebrows. There were ambitions in the simple Rattrays that he had not divined. This he told Meg, but she said only, ‘Well, why not? He really cares about the work.’

  He smiled a little grimly, and she said quickly, ‘In any case, you can rely on him for a few months. It’s as well, really, that she did veto the dance band.’

  He said dryly, ‘In fact, everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Nevertheless, the hand-over will have to be made by easy stages.’

  ‘Not too easy, David,’ she said.

  The exhilarating weather of April with its lively south-east breezes and bright sunshine turned to a boggy, sodden May. The wind still blew, but in south-westerly squalls that brought, in the first days, showers and eventually a ceaseless, dampening, fine rain, alternating with torrents and gales that beat down the azaleas, broke the stoutest tulips and left the rhododendron bushes with sodden bloom. Despite the south-west wind, it turned cold, with frost at nights and one or two hailstorms. All gardeners and farmers were in distress. Tim lived to protect the blooms of his new hybrids. Mrs Boniface was forever saying to Meg that they, being townspeople, suffered more from bad weather in the country than the natives; yet, for the first time she had some differences with her over the need for fires. But Meg won her way and fires there were. Over them she and David crouched, happily absorbed in their reading and note taking.